Cemetery Columns
Cemetery Columns
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A Cemetery To Die For
For Halloween 2024, I decided that my ever expanding cemetery in my front yard (during the Halloween season) was in need of a defining feature that welcomed guest to the experince I was attempting to create. The features that stood out as a necessity for a cemetery were a pair of large brick columns that would stand at either side of the driveway entrance. Below I will show you some of the steps I took to create these columns.
Requirements
Requirements
A few requirements that I wanted to set for this projects were the following:
The columns needed to look like actual brick columns with detail and textures that allowed a guest to feel like they were real, while at the same time being made of off the shelf items.
The columns needed to be lightweight and able to be moved easily.
Some sort of lighting element should be incorporated into the tower to provide a greater effect of realism to the cemetery theme.
The columns should fit a pair of base pieces that I acquired from a haunted house sale.
I began by measuring out the base piece and cutting some 1/4" plywood that would act as the siding of the columns. This plywood was joined by woodscrews to a wood frame constructed of 1x4 pieces of wood.
The column body was built and placed into the purchased base.
A second column body was created in a similar manner.
Tops to the columns were constructed in similar manners to the column bodies.
The faux bricks were made by cutting 1" insulation foam to the appropriate size, then (using an improvised thermal wire cutter) cutting those pieces in half down the center to make them 1/2" thick, and finally texturing those pieces with a spray bottle and heat gun to create a natural texture on the bricks.
Each of the ~200 faux foam bricks were cut and glued in a semi random order to replicate the form of a real brick column. Faux bricks were joined at corners to replicate the look of actual brick laying features.
A couple coats for Drylock multipurpose sealer was applied to the entire column to assist with weather-proofing and to give the columns a gritty texture that would replicate the feeling of bricks.
The tops were covered with the same 1" thick insulation foam and sanded in a pattern that looked like natural stone work. They were glued to the tops. Inverted baseboards were added to the sided of the top sections to create an ornamental edge seen on many cemetery columns.
Final Items:
An exterior weatherproof light was added to the top of the column.
The bricks were painted with an acrylic red paint and were dry brushed with earthier tones.
The final column stands just over 7ft tall and is easily movable via a hand truck.
Project Completion
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